Home goods e-retailer Fab.com expands into Europe

By Allison EnrightEditor

The flash-sale e-retailer expects international sales to contribute 10-20% of 2012 revenue.

Fab.com, an eight-month-old flash-sale e-retailer of design-focused home goods, today launched Fab.de to serve consumers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Fab entered those markets by acquiring the five-month-old Casacanda, a Berlin-based flash sale online retailer that also sold high-fashion design products. Fab.com says it plans to expand to more countries in Europe and that it expects international sales to contribute 10-20% of overall revenue in 2012.

Fab.com CEO Jason Goldberg, in a blog post, wrote that Fab began thinking about expanding internationally in October and quickly focused on Germany as a potential base because of its strong economy and because many Germans buy the type of design-focused products Fab sells. He says he was impressed by Casacanda’s plans for the future and its leadership, which will continue to run the European business now that it is part of Fab.

Casacanda also brings its connections to the European design world with it, and Goldberg says this will help Fab source products that it can sell in all its markets. “All this means we’ll enable consumers to turn to Fab for more and more great design products, at the best prices, delivered rapidly, sourced from all over the globe,” Goldberg says.

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Fab did not reveal what it paid to acquire Casacanda, which Goldberg says has 250,000 members and is currently filling 15,000 orders per month. Starting today, Casacanda members will automatically be rerouted to Fab.de and that e-commerce site will soon be moved onto Fab.com’s technology platform. The European site will only be available in German initially, but will soon launch in English.

In January, Fab.com acquired FashionStake, an online fashion marketplace based in New York City on which hundreds of independent designers have sold their goods. In December, the e-retailer announced it had raised $40 million in venture funding.

Fab.com, which has secured more than two million members in eight months since relaunching as a limited-time sale retailer, was featured in Internet Retailer’s Hot 100 magazine issue, which highlights the most innovative online retailers of 2011. Order your copy of this special issue here.